Chapter Thirty-Four
TIG
I’ve seen a lot of fucked-up shit in my day.
I had done a lot of fucked-up shit in my day.
But nothing, not one life I had seen after someone else took it, not one life that died at my own hands, nothing even close to comparing to what it was like to see that knife, to realize her neck was pulled up at that angle so he could slice both arteries, so he would be sure she would choke on her own blood and die, to see the spray of blood for a moment before her body was tossed to the floor and the camera shut off.
My head swiveled, immediately seeking Sawyer, seeing the same grim look there.
Jstorm and L had already moved back to their laptops, frantically back at work. Because it was no longer necessary to find the son of a bitch because he stole a girl and, it seemed, abused her. No, there was a fucking killer on the loose.
That would not stand.
Alex had stayed behind the desk. Though she was not a touchy-feely person, her hand reached automatically for Kenz, who jerked violently away.
“Alex, call the cops,” Sawyer decided, making her head snap in his direction, seeking answers and finding them, all of us knowing we were in way over our heads.
And though there was nothing we could have done differently, we all knew that we needed to report it and accept whatever rant we would get for going forth with the money transfer, and accept whatever expertise they could offer.
“Tig,” he added, jerking his head toward Kenzi, who seemed to have emptied her stomach but was just completely racked with silent sobs.
I nodded, reaching for the roll of paper towels Barrett kept on his desk, ripping some off, and handing them to her. She was still aware enough of her surroundings to take them, to wipe her eyes, to blow her nose, to toss them in the bin.
I reached for her then, feeling her shrink away, but knowing I needed to get her away for a second, try to calm her down.
Or, in lieu of that, at least get her near a toilet in case it happened again.
So my hands slipped around her shoulders and under her legs, careful to not flash anyone because, despite the fucking insane situation we were in, I was still acutely aware that she had gone commando.
And the Kenzi she would be again once she grieved—well, she would have my balls as earrings if she knew I let her flash her vag in front of all those people.
“Come on, honey,” I said, feeling her turn her face into my neck, the wet of her tears touching my skin, her body shaking with her cries.
I closed us into the bathroom, sitting down with her on my lap in the small space.
I found that I had nothing to say.
Because there was nothing to say.
What could I do? Feed her platitudes she would resent about everything being okay, that she would move past this, that there wasn’t anything we could do?
The situation was fucked beyond words. That she had to see that shit play out was even worse. It would have been bad enough for her to just get a call about the body, to know she had been killed, even just having the details. That was all traumatic, sad, life-changing.
But seeing the shit happen?
It made sense that she broke.
For fuck’s sake, I was having a hard time holding it together, and I was a professional.
So, without anything else, I said the one thing that I knew to be true.
“I’m here for you, honey.” My lips pressed into her hair, squeezing her tighter as a pained, dying animal noise ripped out of her, something that had been buried deep; it was the worst noise I had ever heard in my life.
I had no fucking idea how long I held her, how long she cried, seeming like there was an endless well inside.
We probably would have stayed there all night if there hadn’t been a tap on the door right before it opened, revealing Alex, looking worn the fuck out.
“I called Paine,” she said, shrugging. “I didn’t know what to do. She needs her family…”
I nodded as she moved out of the way, and there were Paine and Reese, both of them drained-looking as I gave them a nod. I moved to stand, intending to put her in her brother’s arms. But when he went to pull her from me, she whimpered and buried deeper into my chest.
His brow rose at me, reading the situation in a blink. I couldn’t tell what his reaction was because his face was locked down tight.
“Kenz?” Reese’s quiet voice asked, tentative, worried. Likely because the last thing you expected when you knew Kenzi was to see her fall apart.
That ripped her out of her daze, yanking against my hold until I let her feet hit the ground.
Then she threw herself at her sister, knocking Reese back into the solid wall that was Paine.
His arms went around both of them, and I gave him a chin jerk as I exited the room, letting them grieve in private.
When I walked into the main room, Lloyd was there, his annoying partner missing. “How’s she holding up?” he asked me, likely reading the tension in my face.
“Not good. You can’t question her right now.”
He simply gave me a tight nod as the door flew open and Barrett walked back in, hair wet, eyes frantic.
I had worked with Barrett a lot over the years.
While he was pretty much the exact opposite of his brother in every way except maybe the tenacity with which he approached work, he had always proven himself to bethe more rational, detached of the two.
So seeing his eyes racing around, feeling the pulsating energy around him, it was all the more unsettling.
“Good timing, Mr. Anderson,” Lloyd said, nodding. “I am going to need to take your laptop.
That made Barrett freeze, knowing, as the rest of us did, that he had done a ton of illegal shit on that laptop over the past twenty-four hours. His eyes immediately sought Jstorm’s, who gave him a hand wave, relaying the message that they had already thought of that for him and wiped everything.
“Yeah, sure. Whatever you need.”
“I am going to go ahead and figure that with how accommodating you are being, that we aren’t going to find anything,” he assumed, again proving that while good ole trusty Detective Collings was recently retired, there was still someone on the force who understood how shit went in our town.
“I need it regardless. I am going to assume that from this point on, you won’t be sharing information with us. ”
He knew our brands of justice, at that point, would be vastly different, and what’s more, he didn’t even blame us.
“Jersey doesn’t have the death penalty,” he said, giving us a knowing look as he reached for Barrett’s laptop that said he thought that was a damn shame and therefore completely understood wanting blood for blood.
Especially when an innocent, abused woman was the victim.
“Best of luck on your search,” he said, touching two fingers to his temple and moving them out in a salute before he was gone.
“Alright,” Barrett said, all business again as he went into his desk drawer and brought out another laptop.
Funny thing about Barrett: he didn’t have some badass thousand-dollar laptop like Janie and Alex. He bought them on the cheap because he fried them when he was done with them. One was as good as the next.
“Did you guys isolate the sounds yet?” he asked, and Jstorm saluted him, not looking up from her screen.
I knew what they were doing—that they were either braver than the rest of us or maybe better at compartmentalizing things than we were. They were taking apart the video to look for clues.
“Who is on the video hosting site?” To that, Alex jerked her head at him as she typed. “L, what are you up to?” But L was too into whatever he was doing to answer. “Alright. I will get back to the Bitcoin angle.”
“Never felt so fucking useless on my own goddamn case,” I admitted to Sawyer and Brock as we all leaned against the wall, waiting for a lead that would require actual action.
“Criminals are getting too goddamn high-tech,” Sawyer agreed. “We might want to start taking some fucking night classes or some shit.”
It was another half-hour when the door flew open yet again. And, seeing as everyone who was even remotely linked to the case was already there, all three of us shot upright.
And in he walked.
I hadn’t seen him in the better part of a year, and the last time I had, he was beaten to shit, having just gotten pushed out of the gang he led.
It was Kenzi, Reese, and Paine’s half-brother, Enzo.
He looked like them too, with the same tawny skin, the same long bodies, the same green eyes.
“How the fucking hell is my goddamn sister involved with a stalker, kidnapper, rapist, and motherfucking murderer and no one thought to pick up the goddamn phone and call me?”
That was a valid question for which none of us had a truly valid answer.
“Did Paine call you?”
Enzo’s head jerked to look at Sawyer, eyes getting even more intense. “Paine knew?”
“Shit,” Sawyer said, shaking his head. “Who the hell told you then?”
“Gina called, said she got a call from Reese and that I needed to get my ass back down to Navesink Bank because she couldn’t get a hold of Paine, and she was taking one of her sisters to a doctor up in Basking Ridge and wouldn’t be able to get here soon enough.”
“She probably couldn’t get Paine because he was on the way here,” I supplied, watching his eyes fall on me, sizing me up with fresh eyes. “He and Reese are with Kenz in the bathroom. She’s…” I shook my head, not able to find the words to explain.
“She’s a strong fucking kid, but when she breaks, she splinters,” he agreed, looking around at our group.
“Don’t bother,” Brock said, reading the situation, knowing Enzo was training to become a PI and was thinking he could be useful. “It’s all IPs and coin mixers and noise isolating…”
Enzo brought a hand up to rub his brow, nodding, and moving toward the bathroom with his family. How the hell they all even fit was beyond me.
Brock took off for coffee.